In great confusion, he called to the servants for more lights. On examining the spot of the spirit's disappearance, he found a trap-door; upon raising which, several mattresses appeared, to break the fall of any headlong adventurer. Therefore, descending, he found the spirit to be no other than the farmer himself. His dress, of a complete bull's hide, had secured him from the pistol-shot; and the horns and tail were not diabolic, but mere natural appendages of the original. The rogue confessed his tricks, and was pardoned, on paying the arrears due for five years, at the old rent of the land.
THE
HAMMERSMITH GHOST.
In the year 1804, the inhabitants of Hammersmith were much alarmed by a nocturnal appearance; which, for a considerable time, eluded detection or discovery. In the course of this unfortunate affair, two innocent persons met with an untimely death; and as this transaction engaged the attention of the public in a high degree, we shall fully relate the particulars of it.
An unknown person made it his diversion to alarm the inhabitants, in January 1804, by assuming the figure of a spectre. This sham ghost has certainly much to answer for. One poor woman, who was far advanced in her pregnancy of a second child, was so much shocked, that she took to her bed, and survived only two days. She had been crossing near the church-yard about ten o'clock at night, when she beheld something, as she described, rise from the tomb-stones. The figure was very tall, and very white! She attempted to run, but the supposed ghost soon overtook her, and, pressing her in his arms, she fainted; in which situation she remained some hours, till discovered by the neighbours, who kindly led her home, when she took to her bed, from which, alas! she never rose. A waggoner belonging to Mr. Russell was also so alarmed, while driving a team of eight horses, which had sixteen passengers at the time, that he took to his heels, and left the waggon, horses, and passengers, in the greatest danger. Neither man, woman, or child, would pass that way for some time; and the report was, that it was the apparition of a man who had cut his throat in that neighbourhood above a year before. Several lay in wait different nights for the ghost; but there were so many bye-lanes, and paths leading to Hammersmith, that he was always sure of being in that which was unguarded, and every night played off his tricks, to the terror of the passengers.
One Francis Smith, doubtless incensed at the unknown person who was in the habit of assuming the supernatural character, and thus frightening the superstitious inhabitants of the village, rashly determined on watching for, and shooting the ghost; when, unfortunately, in Black-Lion Lane, he shot a poor innocent man, Thomas Millwood, a bricklayer, who was in a white dress, the usual habiliment of his occupation. This rash act, having been judged wilful murder by the coroner's inquest, Smith was accordingly committed to gaol, and took his trial at the ensuing sessions at the Old Bailey, January 13th, 1804. The jury at first found him guilty of manslaughter; but the crime being deemed murder in the eye of the law, the judge could only receive a verdict of Guilty, or acquittal. He was then found guilty, and received sentence of death, but was afterwards pardoned on condition of being imprisoned one year.
THE
FRIGHTENED CARRIER.
In October 1813, a little before midnight, as one of the carriers between Nottingham and Loughborough, was passing near the village of Rempstone, he was extremely surprised at meeting what he thought was a funeral procession, marching in a most solemn and steady order in the centre of the road. The carrier, with a becoming propriety and decorum, drew his cart to the side of the road, that the mournful cavalcade might pass without any interruption. Very active inquiry was immediately afterwards made in the neighbourhood, but not the least knowledge could be obtained as to where this solemn group had come from, or whither it was going; it was therefore concluded, that some ghostly apparition or other had thought proper to be then exercising its nocturnal avocation. Some days afterwards it was found out, that a person, who lived in the neighbouring village, had been endeavouring to construct a carriage upon such a principle as to go without horses; and, wishing to make his experiment as secret as possible, had chosen that dead hour of the night, for trying his apparatus on the turnpike road; but unluckily meeting with the carrier, he became alarmed for fear of an exposure, and therefore threw a large sheet over the machinery, and passed the cart as silently as possible, to avoid being detected.
THE
CLUB-ROOM GHOST.
At a town in the west of England, was held a club of twenty-four persons, which assembled once a week, to drink punch, smoke tobacco, and talk politics. Like Rubens's Academy at Antwerp, each member had his peculiar chair, and the president's was more exalted than the rest. One of the members had been in a dying state for some time; of course, his chair, while he was absent, remained vacant.